Military takeover of Rio police stirs dictatorship ghosts

RIO DE JANEIRO: The ghosts of Brazil’s dictatorship are stirring in the wake of President Michel Temer’s order for the army to take over policing in Rio de Janeiro.

There’s no direct comparison between the Rio operation and the 1964 coup that brought two decades of military rule to Latin America’s biggest country. In this case, the military isn’t overturning a president -- it’s just taking charge of Rio state’s security situation after months of escalating crime.

But the echoes have been loud enough to force the government into extraordinary denials.

“I’m going to tell you how many marks I give the idea of a military coup: zero,” Temer told Radio Bandeirantes on Friday. The centerright president went on to say that there was “no mood” in the military or population for a coup.

Earlier, the defense minister, Raul Jungmann, stated “there is no risk to democracy.... On the contrary, we are strengthening democracy.”

First since democracy’s return

Over the last decade, Rio residents have grown used to seeing camouflaged soldiers support the police in their battle against powerfully armed drug gangs.

Some 8,500 troops arrived last July in an ongoing deployment to help with operations in favelas, the latest of which took place Friday in western Rio. During the 2016 Olympics, troops focused on securing among the bathing-suit clad crowds of Copacabana and Ipanema.

But the “intervencao,” as it’s called in Portuguese, is different this time.

Now the army isn’t only helping out -- it’s taking full charge, with generals replacing the entire civilian leadership of the police.

This hasn’t happened anywhere in Brazil since democracy returned in 1985.

Mass arrests

Facing an understandably nervous public, the government made what looked like an immediate PR blunder by suggesting that mass arrests and mass searches might become the norm.

A woman carries her child as she walks past military police on patrol near the Vila Kennedy favela in Rio de Janeiro on February 23, 2018. More than 3,000 soldiers supported Rio de Janeiro police Friday in a sweep of three violence-plagued favelas in the west of the Brazilian city, officials said.

That would mean, for example, the army will use deadly force that an entire street, rather than a when justified. But rights activists, single house, could be subjected to weary after years of botched police an intense raid. operations and stray bullets, ask who

There was strong backlash, inwill hold the soldiers to account. cluding from Brazil’s highestThe army wants troops to be subprofile anti- corruption prosecutor, ject only to military courts, while Deltan Dallagnol. the police it is working alongside

The government has softened its have to face regular courts. message on the collective searches. Adding a politically explosive

But there are still widespread twist to that already complex isfears that military intervention sue, the army’s top commander, will become a blunt instrument General Eduardo Villas Boas, said endangering poor and defenseless this week he wants “a guarantee of people in the favelas, while doing being able to act without risking a little to eradicate narco gangs. new truth commission.”

A short video made by three He was referring to the National young black men about surviving Truth Commission, a body set up encounters with police -- including by then leftist president Dilma advising against carrying a long Rousseff to examine appalling umbrella that could be mistaken human rights abuses committed for a gun -- went immediately viral during the military dictatorship. on social media. Many saw the commission as a

“The intervention in Rio is an way to air painful memories and inadequate and extreme measure promote reconciliation, even if that causes concern because it puts an amnesty meant that confessed the population’s human rights at torturers revealed in the commisrisk,” said Amnesty International’s sion’s final 2014 report could not director in Brazil, Jurema Werneck. be tried.

Villas Boas, however, revealed the army’s nervousness and perhaps lingering resentment.

Another key figure in the Rio intervention -- Temer’s security

Who watches the watchmen?

Temer made it clear Friday that minister Sergio Etchegoyen -- has previously lambasted the truth commission’s report as “pathetic.”

Etchegoyen’s father, Leo, served in high positions during the dictatorship, while an uncle allegedly headed the so- called “House of Death” -- a property near Rio where mainly far left political prisoners were fatally tortured.

Trial balloon?

One story fueling conspiracy theories has been that Rio is only a trial balloon for more widespread military takeovers. Last year, Etchegoyen himself described Rio de Janeiro as a “laboratory.”

This week, though, he backtracked partly on this, stressing there was “currently” no need for a takeover in other states.

But on Friday, Temer stirred the pot when he revealed that he’d considered extending the federal government’s takeover from the Rio security services to the entire state government.

“It was a conversation we had but it was soon discarded,” he told Radio Bandeirantes.

“It was a very radical thing and I quickly refuted it,” he said.